I RECENTLY attended a preschooler's birthday at which every girl was dressed as a fairy, a princess or a ballerina. This was not a fancy dress party. The boys were all outfitted in practical, knock-about gear. I found myself wondering if I was the only one who thought the sea of pink tulle and miniature tutus a bit bizarre.
In recent years the fairy princess aesthetic appears to have reached epidemic proportions, to the extent that it's hard to find a female child who hasn't sprouted gossamer wings, been smothered in glitter and wrapped in tulle.
Just pick up a Melbourne's Child magazine and take a look at the ads for fairy-themed parties, or check out your local toy store and you'll see just how common the fairy princess theme has become.
We're living in a period of growing sensitivity about how we depict our girl children, revealed most tellingly in the commotion surrounding Bill Henson's art, and restated in the objections raised against the July cover of Art Monthly. We have also heard a chorus of commentators passionately condemning the rise of "raunch culture". We are warned that girls are losing their innocence prematurely in our media-saturated world. Bratz dolls, pole-dancing kits marketed to children, and even David Jones catalogues have all been censured for intensifying the sexualisation of young girls.
Yet amid all this anxiety, we seem to be overlooking the pink elephant in the nursery, the one in fairy wings and a tiara. Like raunch culture, the fairy princess aesthetic and its associated paraphernalia serve to entrench an extremely narrow idea of femininity, impressing on young girls that they are pretty, flighty little objects to be admired and marvelled at, rather than active young things seeking out adventure.
This reinforces a passive understanding of what it is to be female, encouraging fantasies that are focused less on action, and far more on how you look. Of course, fairies and princesses can have adventures, but hyper-feminised modes of dressing put the focus squarely on appearance, teaching girls that self-worth is measured by how pretty you are, and not by what you do.
This is not a new argument. It's gender-equality 101. What is fresh is the whiff of hypocrisy surrounding those parents who so readily lament the rise of raunch, while at the same time dressing their daughters in ways that entrench objectifying feminine stereotypes.
Next time you join a conversation decrying the "pornifaction" of our society, express concern about teenage girls dressing like strippers or vent your outrage at a billboard featuring a semi-clad woman, ask yourself how all this starts. Isn't it at least plausible that the scantly clad teenage girl who bases her self-worth on seeking the sexual approval of men started out as a toddler princess being told how pretty she is?
As a child I was a tomboy. I thought most dolls were boring lumps of plastic, although I did hanker after a Baby Alive. (At least she did something, even if it was just eat and defecate.) Now I'm a parent myself, and I know that it's almost impossible, and certainly not practical, to avoid all the gender-specific accoutrements of early childhood. We live in a gendered society, in which the distinction between the sexes is constantly emphasised and reiterated. This is not always and necessarily a negative. Yet it's negligent of us to ignore instances in which this gendering is detrimental, and fairy princess dress-ups as a dominant form of girl play is one of these instances.
The parents of little princesses often protest that their girls want to dress in this way, even though they themselves haven't encouraged it. I have no doubt that some little girls do develop an apparently spontaneous love of all things pink with an associated desire to be a ballet-dancing fairy princess. Similarly, my two-year-old would like to eat cake at every meal, but I simply say no. Small children don't always know what's best for them, which is where parents come into the picture.
So, here's an idea: no matter how keen your daughter may be on her pretty princess outfit, pack it away and bring it out only for occasional play.
There may be a few tears, but you might also short-circuit a development path that leads to a grown woman who, deep down, still sees herself as all sugar and spice. And one thing's for sure you'll have greater success controlling what your three-year-old wears than you will if you wait to fight an uphill battle with her as a teenager.
Monica Dux's book The Great Feminist Denial, with Zora Simic, will be published by Melbourne University Press in September.
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